Folk Art and Paintings

In art, folk art means art made outside the academies, by painters and craftspeople without formal art training. The Getty's Art & Architecture Thesaurus defines it as art and crafts that stand outside the canons of academic taste, made in close-knit communities and guided by local traditions, from paintings to ceramics, textiles and sculpture. Our folk paintings, from the 18th to the 20th century, include portraits and farm views by traveling American painters, religious and historical scenes, Mexican and Russian popular prints and Indian Kalighat pictures.

Sources: Getty AAT: folk art · Getty AAT: lubki · Getty AAT: Kalighat

The two overlap, and the words are often used for the same pictures. The Getty's thesaurus separates them: folk art follows the traditions of a community, while naive art is made by individuals without formal training, often self-taught, and typically shows a childlike rendering of anatomy and perspective. Tate describes naive art as simple and unsophisticated, made by artists who had no training at an art school or academy, and names Henri Rousseau as its most famous modern painter.

Sources: Getty AAT: folk art · Getty AAT: naive art · Tate: Naïve art

Folk paintings usually have flat space, firm outlines and strong color, with every detail spelled out. The Getty's thesaurus notes the childlike rendering of anatomy and perspective in naive art. The Art Institute of Chicago points out that the face in Ammi Phillips's portrait of Cornelius Allerton is barely modeled and that Phillips borrowed his poses from European prints, and that Sheldon Peck lettered his sitters' names into the picture; the Minneapolis Institute of Art sees bold patterns and odd changes of scale in Thomas Chambers's landscapes.

Sources: Getty AAT: naive art · Art Institute of Chicago: Ammi Phillips, Cornelius Allerton · Art Institute of Chicago: Sheldon Peck, William W. Welch · Minneapolis Institute of Art: Thomas Chambers, View of West Point

Among those whose work is now in the public domain: Edward Hicks, the Quaker sign painter who painted the Peaceable Kingdom more than 60 times; the traveling portrait painters Ammi Phillips and Erastus Salisbury Field, and Joseph Whiting Stock of Springfield, Massachusetts; José Guadalupe Posada, Mexico's most prolific broadside illustrator around 1900; and two self-taught painters, Henri Rousseau in Paris and Niko Pirosmani in Tbilisi. Grandma Moses, who began painting in her late seventies, died in 1961, so her paintings are still under copyright.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom · Art Institute of Chicago: Ammi Phillips, Cornelius Allerton · Smithsonian American Art Museum: Erastus Salisbury Field · Getty ULAN: Joseph Whiting Stock · Art Institute of Chicago: José Guadalupe Posada, Revolutionary Calavera · Tate: Naïve art · Fondation Beyeler: Niko Pirosmani (exhibition, 2023–24) · Smithsonian American Art Museum: Grandma Moses

American folk art is the work of self-taught and artisan painters in the United States, above all in the 1800s: portraits by traveling limners, views of farms and villages, and religious and historical scenes. Ammi Phillips began as a sign painter and taught himself portraiture, and Erastus Salisbury Field chose the flat, simplified portraits his clients preferred. The Smithsonian American Art Museum calls such work the vision of America's untrained and vernacular artists. Many American folk paintings in the Met and the Art Institute of Chicago were given by the collectors Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago: Ammi Phillips, Cornelius Allerton · Smithsonian American Art Museum: Erastus Salisbury Field · Smithsonian American Art Museum: Folk and Self-Taught Art · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Edward Hicks, The Falls of Niagara · Art Institute of Chicago: Erastus Salisbury Field, Woman with a Green Book

Edward Hicks (1780–1849) was a Quaker sign painter who turned to painting. In the last thirty years of his life he painted the Peaceable Kingdom again and again: an allegory based on Isaiah 11:6–9, in which “the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb”, to which he added Quaker belief and Pennsylvania history. Of more than 60 versions, the Cleveland Museum of Art thinks its own, from about 1816–18, is likely the first. Our collection holds that one, a later version of about 1834 from the National Gallery of Art, and his Falls of Niagara and The Cornell Farm.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom · Cleveland Museum of Art: Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (Google Arts & Culture) · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Edward Hicks, The Falls of Niagara

Strictly, no: Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) is called a naive painter. The Getty's thesaurus keeps the two apart: naive art is made by self-taught individuals, folk art within a community's traditions. In everyday use the words overlap, which is why we include him. A retired Paris customs inspector, he showed at the Salon des Indépendants and was admired by Picasso and other avant-garde artists, the Cleveland Museum of Art notes. His jungles are imaginary, since he never left France. Tate calls him the most famous naive artist of modern times.

Sources: Cleveland Museum of Art: Henri Rousseau, Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo · National Gallery, London: Henri Rousseau, Surprised! · Tate: Naïve art · Getty AAT: naive art · Getty AAT: folk art

Mexican folk art includes crafts as well as pictures; in our collection it means mostly the popular prints of José Guadalupe Posada. Posada illustrated thousands of broadsides, cheap handbills for working- and middle-class readers in Mexico City around 1900, full of news, scandals and curiosities, the Art Institute of Chicago notes. His calaveras, satirical skeletons made for the Day of the Dead, are the best-remembered part of his work; in 1943 the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City put his skeleton lady, La Calavera Catrina, on the poster for its Posada exhibition.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago: José Guadalupe Posada, Revolutionary Calavera · Metropolitan Museum of Art: poster for the 1943 Posada exhibition, Palacio de Bellas Artes

Minhwa is the Korean name for folk painting. Its best-known subject is the tiger and magpie: the Victoria and Albert Museum explains that such paintings were popular in Korea in the 19th century and were often put up on the front gate of a home at New Year, because the tiger was thought to drive away evil and magpies to bring good news, and that their humor is typical of the genre. Our collection does not yet hold Korean folk paintings; for other Korean works see Korean painting.

Sources: Victoria and Albert Museum: Tiger and Magpie (FE.68-1997)

Every region has its own folk pictures. The Getty's thesaurus lists Russian lubki, popular prints of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as The Mice Are Burying the Cat; Ōtsu-e, Japanese folk paintings popular with pilgrims and travelers from the 1620s; and Kalighat paintings, quick, boldly colored pictures of Hindu gods and daily life sold cheaply to pilgrims at the Kalighat temple in Calcutta, such as Hanuman. In Christian countries painted ex-votos, given to a church in thanks for deliverance from illness or distress, are another folk form.

Sources: Getty AAT: lubki · Getty AAT: Otsu-e · Getty AAT: Kalighat · Getty AAT: ex-votos · Cleveland Museum of Art: Hanuman, Kalighat painting

Outsider art is art made outside the usual training and structures of the art world, for example by psychiatric patients and prisoners. Tate notes that the French artist Jean Dubuffet called it art brut, “raw art”, and founded the Compagnie de l'Art Brut with André Breton in 1948. The Getty's thesaurus separates it from naive art: outsider artists avoid training on principle rather than simply lacking it. The Swiss Adolf Wölfli, who began drawing in 1899 as a patient at the Waldau psychiatric hospital near Bern and filled some 25,000 pages, is a leading example.

Sources: Tate: Outsider art · Getty AAT: naive art · Adolf Wölfli Foundation: Life

A limner is a painter of portraits; in early America the word was used for the mostly self-taught painters who traveled from town to town painting likenesses. The Art Institute of Chicago says Ammi Phillips taught himself to be a limner, learned techniques from other Connecticut limners and became one of the most successful portraitists of rural New England. He first advertised in 1809, offering to paint likenesses in his room at a tavern in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago: Ammi Phillips, Cornelius Allerton · Art Institute of Chicago: Ammi Phillips, Mrs. Reuben Allerton

Because they are still under copyright. Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known as Grandma Moses, began painting at 77 and died in 1961 at 101, the Smithsonian American Art Museum notes, so her paintings stay protected until the end of 2031 where copyright lasts 70 years after the artist's death. The Canadian painter Maud Lewis (1901–1970), whom the Art Canada Institute calls arguably the best-known artist from Nova Scotia today, is protected in those countries until the end of 2040. The folk and naive painters we feature all died by 1918.

Sources: Smithsonian American Art Museum: Grandma Moses · Art Canada Institute: Maud Lewis (1901–1970) · Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain

Yes, for the folk and naive works we feature: their painters and printmakers died by 1918 and the works date from before 1930, so they are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. Many of our images come from museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art, which release their public-domain images for free, unrestricted use. A few countries have their own rules on photographs of artworks, so check them if you publish outside the U.S.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain · Art Institute of Chicago: Open access images · Cleveland Museum of Art: Open access